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‘It’s Us or Them’: Prospect of Israel-Hezbollah War Rises as Iran-Backed Terrorists Ramp Up Drone Strikes
Flames seen at the side of a road, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, close to the Israel border with Lebanon, in northern Israel, June 4, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ayal Margolin
An explosives-laden drone launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon injured 11 people in a northern Israeli town on Wednesday, further raising the specter of a new front opening amid rapidly escalating tensions between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group.
Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon, took responsibility for launching “several projectiles” at Israel, it said, including two that hit a soccer field in the Druze town of Hurfeish, where sirens were not activated. At least one person was critically wounded and a further 10 evacuated to a hospital. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was investigating why the incoming projectile alert sirens did not sound.
Early reports from military sources indicate the drone attacks occurred in quick succession, with the second appearing to intentionally target emergency responders rushing to aid victims of the initial blast, a tactic repeatedly used by Hezbollah terrorists during the current conflict.
The attack came hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel was prepared with an “intensely powerful” response to Hezbollah.
“Whoever thinks that he will attack us and that we will stand idly by is gravely mistaken,” Netanyahu said. He made his remarks during a tour of Israel’s charred north 48 hours after projectiles from Hezbollah had sparked several massive fires in the area, burning entire villages. More than 4,500 missiles and drones have been fired from Lebanon since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war to the Jewish state’s south in Gaza.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog offered prayers for the full recovery of the victims of the Hurfeish attack.
“The world needs to wake up and understand that Israel has no alternative but to safeguard its citizens, and should not be shocked when Israel responds aggressively,” Herzog said.
Israel has stepped up its own attacks against Hezbollah, targeting “significant assets” as well as senior commanders of the group, the IDF said.
According to diplomatic sources, the US and France have been engaging in shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon for several months now, in an effort to develop a potential negotiated resolution to the conflict.
The key goal is to facilitate the withdrawal of Hezbollah’s presence to over 6 miles north of the Israeli border, beyond the Litani River, and to allow either the Lebanese military or an international peacekeeping force to move into the vacated area along the border. As part of the proposed framework, Israel and Lebanon would also work to resolve longstanding border demarcation disputes between the two nations, The Wall Street Journal reported.
But Sarit Zehavi — a resident of northern Israel and the founder and director of Alma, a research center that focuses on security challenges relating to Israel’s northern border — told The Algemeiner that anything short of destroying Hezbollah would result in a “massacre” of a scale larger than Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“Everyone understands the cost of war here, but at the same time everybody understands that if it will end up with a ceasefire that would take us back to Oct. 6, this will mean another massacre of Israelis by Hezbollah since Hamas actually replicated the Hezbollah plan to occupy the Galilee,” Zehavi said.
The overwhelming sentiment, she said, is that authorities are failing to take adequate measures, both offensively and defensively.
Zehavi pointed to the lack of bomb shelters in the area and the threat of anti-tank missiles that has become a daily reality over the past eight months, with Hezbollah launching strikes that cannot be intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system and that often arrive without rocket siren warnings.
Compounding concerns, she said, is an alarming surge in attack drone activity from Hezbollah, especially over the last two months, with numbers sharply increasing month-over-month.
“Hezbollah is deliberately escalating the situation to try to drag Israel into war,” Zehavi told The Algemeiner. “I believe this was Hezbollah’s aim from the beginning. It’s not deterred; it’s not interested in a ceasefire. If there will be a ceasefire in Gaza, Hezbollah will follow, but only in order to recover and to execute a massacre at its most convenient timing.”
More than 80,000 Israelis evacuated Israel’s north in October and have since been unable to return to their homes. The majority of those spent the past eight months residing in hotels in safer areas of the country.
One of them, Avi Vanunu, said that unless Israel embarked on a full-scale invasion of Lebanon soon, returning home to his border town of Kiryat Shmona wouldn’t be possible “even in ten years’ time.”
“I don’t even know if my house is still standing or if it was hit by a rocket,” he told The Algemeiner. “Tonight’s attack [on Hurfeish] just proves: It’s us or them.”
The only comfort he took, Vanunu said, was in the fact that Hurfeish was a Druze village, with many residents who had served as Border Police officers and in the IDF in senior positions.
“This won’t pass easily,” he said. “Just look at how they reacted after that Druze boy was kidnapped.”
Vanunu was referring to a Nov. 2022 incident in which the body of a Druze Israeli teen was stolen by terrorists from a hospital in the Palestinian city of Jenin, prompting widespread anger and several revenge attacks from members of the Druze community, including kidnapping Palestinian laborers in Israel and throwing explosive devices in West Bank towns.
Maj. Shadi Khalloul (res), an expert on Hezbollah and Lebanon, called the efforts to push Hezbollah away to past the Litani River “a joke.”
“It’s deceiving Israeli citizens again. It’s dangerous. We should fully destroy [Hezbollah],” Khalloul, who also serves as the president of the Aramaic Christian Galilee Center, told The Algemeiner, warning that if Israel failed to do so, the terror group would be prepared to “destroy Israel together with a nuclear Iran.”
The post ‘It’s Us or Them’: Prospect of Israel-Hezbollah War Rises as Iran-Backed Terrorists Ramp Up Drone Strikes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Culture Minister Cuts Funding for Film Awards After Palestinian Drama Wins Top Prize, Chosen for Oscars Submission
A scene from “The Sea.” Photo: The Israeli Academy of Film and Television
Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar said his ministry will pull state funding for Israel’s Ophir Awards, which is the Israeli equivalent to the Oscars, after it awarded a top honor to a film that “defames” Israel’s “heroic soldiers,” he announced on Wednesday.
At this year’s Ophir Awards ceremony on Tuesday night, “The Sea” won best picture, which automatically makes the film Israel’s submission for the 2026 Oscars in the category of best international feature film. The drama, directed and written by Shai Carmeli-Pollak and produced by Baher Agbariya, also won best screenplay, best actor for the 13-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Gazawi, best supporting actor for Khalifa Natour, and best original score. The movie, filmed in Arabic and Hebrew, marks Gazawi’s first acting role.
The Ophir Awards are voted on by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, a nonprofit organization that is the Israeli version of the US-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. It has more than 1,000 members, including filmmakers, producers, content creators, and actors.
“The Sea” follows a 12-year-old Palestinian boy named Khaled, from a village near Ramallah, who gets the opportunity to go the beach for the first time in his life on a class trip to Tel Aviv. When he is forced to return home at a military checkpoint, while his classmates continue on to the beach, Khaled decides to risk his life and dodge Israeli authorities on his solo journey to reach the ocean. “The Sea” premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival this summer and received support from the Israeli Film Fund.
In a statement on X, Zohar said that after the “pro-Palestinian” film, “which defames our heroic soldiers while they fight to protect us,” won the award for best film at the “shameful” Ophir Awards on Tuesday night, he decided to discontinue funding for the ceremony.
“During my tenure – the citizens of Israel will not pay out of their pockets for a disgraceful ceremony that spits on the heroic IDF soldiers,” he added. “This great absurdity, that Israeli citizens are still paying out of their pockets for the disgraceful Ophir Awards ceremony, which represents less than one percent of the Israeli people – is over. Starting from the 2026 budget, this pathetic ceremony will no longer be funded by taxpayers’ money. The citizens of Israel deserve for their tax money to go to more important and valuable places.”
Several winners on stage at the Ophir Awards ceremony, including Carmeli-Pollak and Agbariya, sported a black T-shirt with a message that called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war and said in Hebrew and Arabic “a child is a child.” Others wore shirts that called for the return of the hostages abducted by Hamas-led terrorists from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and talked about the devastation taking place in Gaza during the ongoing war. Acclaimed Israeli director Uri Barbash received a lifetime achievement award at the ceremony, and in his acceptance speech, he condemned actions of the Israeli government and Zohar, pleaded for an end to the war, and called for solidarity between Jews and Arabs.
“It is our sacred duty to bring all the hostages back to their families immediately,” he said. “To end the accursed war and replace the ‘divide and rule’ regime that has declared war on Israeli society!”
Other movies that competed alongside “The Sea” for best film at this year’s Ophir Awards included Nadav Lapid’s “Yes,” “Dead Language – which made its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and is an expanded version of the Oscar-nominated short film “Aya” – and Natali Braun’s “Oxygen,” which is about a single mother fighting to pull her son out of military service and his deployment to Lebanon.
Israel has had 10 nominations in the category of best international feature film at the Oscars but has yet to win. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences will announce on Dec. 16 a shortlist of 15 contenders for the 2026 Oscar for best international feature film. The final list of nominations will be announced on Jan. 22, 2026, and the 98th Academy Awards will take place on March 15, 2026.
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HBO Max Acquires US Rights to Scripted Series ‘One Day in October’ About Hamas Attack
Bartender and survivor of the Nova Festival, May Hayat, takes cover as rocket sirens sound, during her first visit to the scene of the attack, on the one-month anniversary of the attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Oct. 7, near Re’im, Israel, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
HBO Max has acquired exclusive rights in the United States to “One Day in October,” a scripted series based on real-life, first-hand accounts from the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“One Day in October” is the first real-time scripted portrayal of personal stories from the massacre in southern Israel, where Palestinians terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages. The attack was the deadliest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“One Day in October” will debut on HBO Max in the US on Oct. 7, the two-year anniversary of the attack, FOX Entertainment announced on Monday. Filmed on location in Israel, the four-episode series is co-produced by FOX Entertainment Studios in partnership with Israel’s yes TV, the New York-based production company Sparks Go, and Israel’s ZOA Films, in association with Moriah Media.
The series “presents seven emotionally gripping and artistically interwoven narratives of love, courage, sacrifice and survival,” according to a description provided by HBO Max. “From families torn apart to moments of hope emerging in the face of unspeakable tragedy to incredible bravery against the odds, each episode reveals the human cost and resilience born out of chaos. The series portrays the victims’ and survivors’ experiences of that day and is brought to life by a distinguished cast and acclaimed creative team.”
“One Day in October” is created by Daniel Finkelman, founder of the New York-based production company Sparks Go, and Oded Davidoff, who is also the director and writer on the series. Sparks Go helped co-produce the series.
“The tragic events on Oct. 7 had a profound impact on all of us,” said Fernando Szew, president of FOX Entertainment Studios. “From the very beginning, we approached this series with the utmost care, sensitivity, and urgency to ensure that the stories were told with authenticity and respect and paying homage to the victims and the heroic survivors. Oded and the incredible cast, crew and teams at Sparks Go, ZOA, and yes TV have truly created compelling storytelling that we are proud to showcase.”
The cast includes Swell Ariel Or, Noa Kedar, Naomi Levov, Hisham Suliman, Wael Hamdoun, Yuval Semo, Avi Azulay, Naveh Tzur, Yael Abecassis, Moran Rosenblatt, Michael Aloni, Neta Roth, Sean Softi, Lior Ashkenazi, and Uri Perelman. The series features writing by Liron Ben-Shlush, Davidoff, Amir Hasfari, Keren Weissman, Orit Dabush, and Yona Rozenkier. Jim Berk and Sheldon Rabinowitz with Moriah Media are also executive producers on the series.
“For me, film and television have always been more than entertainment, they are a way to bear witness,” said Finkelman. “These are stories of ordinary people facing extraordinary moments. In a time when truth is fragile, the most powerful thing we can do is to appeal to humanity itself. My hope is that these stories will open hearts and spark meaningful conversation.”
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Merz Says Criticism of Israel in Germany Has Become Pretext for Hatred of Jews
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends celebrations of the newly completed renovation of Reichenbach Strasse synagogue in Munich, Germany, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday that criticism of Israel was increasingly being used in Germany as a pretext for stoking hatred against Jews.
Speaking at an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Central Council of Jews, Merz said that antisemitism had “become louder, more open, more brazen, more violent almost every day” since the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the Gaza war.
“‘Criticism of Israel‘ and the crudest perpetrator-victim reversal is increasingly a pretext under which the poison of antisemitism is spread,” he said.
Germany is Israel‘s second biggest weapons supplier after the US, and has long been one of its staunchest supporters, in part because of historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy known as the “Staatsraison.”
Last month, however, Germany suspended exports of weaponry that could be used in the Gaza Strip because of Israel‘s plan to expand its operations there – the first time united Germany had acknowledged denying military support to its long-time ally.
The decision followed mounting pressure from the public and his junior coalition partner over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In his speech in Berlin on Wednesday, Merz mentioned his about-turn, saying that criticism of the Israeli government “must be possible,” but added: “Our country suffers damage to its own soul when this criticism becomes a pretext for hatred of Jews, or if it even leads to the demand that Germany should turn its back on Israel.”